


Let's Pretend

by celeste9



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Banter, Comfort Sex, Developing Relationship, F/M, Melancholy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-17
Updated: 2016-07-17
Packaged: 2018-07-24 14:47:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7512349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeste9/pseuds/celeste9
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raven didn't love Bellamy but he didn't love her either so it was okay.</p><p>No one could get hurt when no one was in love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Let's Pretend

**Author's Note:**

  * For [buries](https://archiveofourown.org/users/buries/gifts).



> Set vaguely at the end of season one after Raven sleeps with Bellamy. References Raven/Finn and Clarke/Finn.

It wasn’t supposed to happen again. The point of misguided, ‘trying to forget about someone else and you’re kinda hot’ sex was that you did it once, realized it was maybe kind of a stupid idea but it was fun anyway, and then you never did it again.

Which was why Raven was wondering why she was lying next to Bellamy out of breath with most of her clothes on the ground again.

Fuck.

“So that happened,” Bellamy said.

Raven pressed the heels of her hands over her eyes. “Get out.”

“Already going,” Bellamy said, rolling off to the side and presumably retrieving his clothes.

Raven moved her hands just enough so she could peer out at him, long, lean muscles, tan skin, dark mess of sweaty curls. He was too damn attractive, that was all, he was -

He was looking at her, fully dressed. “So if you--”

“Out!”

“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered, sweeping out of the tent.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

-

It was fine though. Twice. That was it. That was nothing. Two times, it was nothing.

It happened again.

And again.

-

Raven told herself it was comfort. That was okay, wasn’t it? She was stuck on the ground in a war she hadn’t asked for and the boy she loved was in love with someone else. So if she needed something to help her get through the day, she thought she could be forgiven.

She didn’t love Bellamy but he didn’t love her either so it was okay.

No one could get hurt when no one was in love.

-

Raven liked being on top.

She was pretty sure Bellamy liked it that way, too.

There were no gentle, teasing touches. It was mostly fast, maybe a little rough. It was good, but it wasn’t nice. Bellamy didn’t touch Raven like Finn used to, like he worshipped her.

But he always pleased her.

-

Bellamy never came to her. It was always Raven.

She would come into his tent when no one could see, when it was dark, when the stars were out. She would crawl on top of him, or she would lie next to him on his makeshift bed.

Sometimes Bellamy said something, usually wry or self-deprecating. Sometimes he didn’t.

He was lying on his back, arms behind his head. He wasn’t asleep, though his eyes were closed. He almost might have been smiling - no, smirking - and Raven knew he knew she was there.

She lay down next to him.

Bellamy was simply lying there beside her and Raven thought, if this were something real, she would be happy right now, she would be content. The radiating warmth from Bellamy’s body, the steady, soft sound of his exhales, the rise and fall of his chest.

But it wasn’t real, because he didn’t love her and she didn’t love him.

So Raven settled on top of him because that was all this was and it would never be anything else.

-

Raven looked up at the darkened sky, at the bright pinpricks of stars in the distance. The breeze was cool against her skin and she shivered in her thin jacket.

“Haven’t you had enough of the stars?”

Glancing at Bellamy as he approached, Raven said, “Looks different down here.”

“Everything does,” Bellamy said. He was looking at Raven.

Raven quirked an eyebrow. “Please don’t tell me you can be that clichéd, Bellamy Blake.”

“Don’t worry, that was no compliment. Generally I find my tastes lean more towards girls with a few less layers of dirt and sweat.”

“You’re one to talk,” Raven said, but she was laughing a little.

Bellamy had a sweet smile when he actually used it. “Dirty guys are sexy though. That’s just how it works.”

“Yeah, you go ahead and tell yourself that.”

“Haven’t heard you complaining,” Bellamy said, and it was a bit of a dare, a push, to refer to what they never talked about and what Raven generally pretended hadn’t happened five minutes after it had.

Could Raven acknowledge this thing that they had, this thing that she couldn’t put a name to? Could she push back?

“Slim pickings,” Raven said, dragging her fingertips briefly over Bellamy’s arm as she walked past him, back to their camp, the soft sound of Bellamy’s laughter in her ears.

-

No one was supposed to know. Raven had thought she’d done a pretty good job of hiding it. Only maybe she hadn’t because Clarke was sitting down next to her on the log and saying, “Are you and Bellamy--”

“No,” Raven said.

“Okay,” Clarke said, eyeing Raven askance. “It’s just… I thought… Uh, you know, Finn…”

“Really? You wanna do this?”

Clarke made this sound that wasn’t quite a laugh but wasn’t quite a snort either. “Not really, actually, now that you mention it.”

Raven half-smiled at her. “Good. That makes two of us.”

Except Clarke kept talking anyway. “I’d be happy for you, you know. If you were. I’m just surprised, that’s all. That it’d be Bellamy.”

“Well, I’m not,” Raven said. “We’re not. So you don’t have to be surprised.”

Though there was still doubt in Clarke’s eyes she just said, “Okay,” and changed the subject.

It wasn’t a lie, Raven told herself. Nothing real was happening with Bellamy so it couldn’t be a lie.

-

They never woke up beside each other.

Sometimes Bellamy fell asleep, drifting off with his face near hers, and sometimes Raven watched him. Just for a little while. Sometimes she wondered, how it would -

But she always left.

Waking up with Bellamy Blake wasn’t what she wanted.

-

Though she didn’t mean to eavesdrop, it was hard to avoid doing so when Raven stumbled upon Octavia and Bellamy in the midst of what seemed to be an intense conversation that Raven had more than an inkling was about her.

“Why do you go along with it? With what she wants, instead of what you want? You deserve--”

“I know what I deserve,” Bellamy interrupted.

Octavia’s eyes flashed, her expression tight and angry, but she noticed Raven and let it go. She swept past with a muttered, “Hey,” and was gone.

Raven stood there, her mind spilling over with all the possibilities of what Octavia might have said, what she felt Bellamy deserved. It didn’t matter though because it all came down to one thing: he deserved better than what Raven was willing to give.

“Just delivering a message from Clarke,” Raven made herself say when Bellamy kept watching her. “She needs you.”

“What else is new?” Bellamy said, but he went because Clarke had asked.

He always did.

-

Sometimes Raven wondered what it was about Clarke that made her special. What had Finn seen in her that he hadn’t seen in Raven, that had made him choose Clarke instead, that had made him forget about Raven when she had fought to get to the ground, done everything in her power so that she could –

Sometimes Raven looked at Bellamy and wondered if she wouldn’t end up second choice to Clarke yet again.

She wasn’t in love. She couldn’t get hurt. That was the driving force behind this thing that wasn’t a relationship but that kept happening anyway.

But Raven wasn’t looking to be second choice to anyone.

-

The box full of salvaged parts was too heavy and Raven struggled under the weight. She could barely see around the sides of it and so she felt she could be excused for the way she almost stumbled when the weight suddenly lessened as someone else grabbed the front end and walked with her. Raven could see Bellamy’s curly hair over the top when she looked.

Raven grunted in relief as they set the box down on the floor inside the tent. She rubbed her fingers where the edges had been cutting off her circulation.

“Looked like you could use some help,” Bellamy said, just barely smiling at her.

She flipped him off and he just laughed.

-

Her clothes were off and so were his, and she had a knee on either side of him as she reached between his legs. Bellamy made this low whine, baring his neck as he leaned his head back, and then somehow it was Raven on her back, the breath knocked out of her, looking up into Bellamy’s laughing eyes.

This wasn’t how they did things, this wasn’t -

Bellamy slid his hand up the inside of Raven’s thigh and she pushed at his chest. “Bellamy, Bellamy, don’t, I--”

“You want me to stop?” he murmured, his lips on her cheek, by her mouth; his hands, his hands were everywhere.

_Fuck, no, don’t stop, it wasn’t right, this wasn’t right, this wasn’t how they worked, he couldn’t touch her like he…_

Raven shoved her fist against her mouth and bit down so she wouldn’t cry out. Bellamy was smirking at her, eyebrows raised, two fingers up to his knuckles inside her. Raven buried her other hand into his hair and tugged, and Bellamy put his smart mouth to better use. His tongue on her thigh, on her -

Raven moaned, and not even her fist could block out the sound.

-

Raven was working when Bellamy came in to the tent, strands of her hair annoyingly falling into her face, too busy concentrating to look up. But she could hear the swish of the flap and somehow knew it was him. Something in the cadence of his step, maybe, or the smell of his skin.

“I’m still not that guy, you know,” Bellamy said, just as he had that first time.

Raven looked at Bellamy standing there, his back straight but something awkward and uncertain in his eyes. He didn’t love her and she didn’t love him but Raven realized that somewhere along the way he had started caring, and so had she.

He wasn’t Finn and he never would be.

But that was the point.

“I know,” Raven said. “Now make yourself useful, hotshot, and pass me that wrench.”

For a moment Bellamy just gaped at her, as if he had expected some sort of actual conversation, here, probably replete with emotion, but then his lips twitched in the smallest of smiles as he moved, getting Raven what she needed.

She allowed herself a tiny smile in return.

**_End_ **


End file.
